“As a 19-year-old, it’s sexy to put up a lot of points,” Pirri said. “As an older guy, you kind of realize that offense comes from good defense. That’s something that I focused on and it’s shown in my numbers.”

(Cue audience snickering at an “older guy” being 22 …)

Head coach Joel Quenneville said that Handzus isn’t injured, he’s just getting rest on a back-to-back, although the feeling is that it wasn’t that short of a scratch, either.

The battle between Chicago’s AHL/NHL tweeners could be interesting to follow this season, as Quenneville called the trio of Pirri, Jimmy Hayes and Jeremy Morin “comparable.”